


In Transit

by The_Cool_Aunt



Series: Endpoint [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 09:44:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3891688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Cool_Aunt/pseuds/The_Cool_Aunt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Greg bent his head low toward John’s. “Listen,” he murmured, just above a whisper.  “I don’t really know how to say this, but this case seems to have Sherlock more wound up than usual. What’s his deal?” John shook his head. “No, it’s fine. He’s fine,” he insisted. "Yes, he is very tightly wound on this case but don’t worry—I’ve got him.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Do you want a salad?” John asked from the kitchen, where he was carefully attempting to put together a quiche that did not include the _botulinum_ toxin that Sherlock was cultivating. At least this time he had neatly labelled it.  
  
“Mm… yes.”  
  
John smiled in anticipation of getting Sherlock to eat something and slid the quiche into the cooker. As he bent into the fridge to see what he had in the way of greens, carefully avoiding two beakers of an extremely nasty-looking liquid, he caught the sound of Sherlock’s mobile ringing. Surprisingly, Sherlock answered it, then put it on speaker. John straightened up and poked his head around from the kitchen.  
  
“Will you come? And John?” Lestrade’s voice sounded strained; subdued.  
  
“Why?” Sherlock asked suspiciously. He wasn’t sure yet if he was suspicious of the request or of the voice.  
  
“It’s just… something’s not right.”  
  
“Well, I suppose. We’ve got nothing better to do,” Sherlock huffed. “Text me the address.”  
  
“John!” he shouted as he got their coats from the closet. He heard his text alert sound; that would be the address. “We’re needed.”  
  
John sighed and nodded, moved the still-cold quiche into the fridge, turned off the cooker, and wiped his hands on the tea towel. A few minutes later, they were in a cab.   
  
“Red Lion Yard in Mayfair,” Sherlock instructed the driver. It was a short ride through the mid-afternoon weekday traffic.  
  
John waited to about a count of thirty before he broke the silence. “Any idea what’s up?” he prodded.  
  
“Hm?” Sherlock murmured, his eyes fixed out the window.  
  
“All right then,” John murmured back.  
  
Red Lion Yard was a quiet, no-through road. Sherlock led the way up to the entry of an old but beautifully maintained building. There was a security system panel at the main door. It displayed several labelled buttons and a number pad, presumably for the tenants to enter their entry codes. Sherlock selected one of the buttons and hit it; while they waited to be buzzed in, his grey eyes swept the entryway, pausing briefly at the CCTV camera mounted discretely in one upper corner and trained directly at them.  
  
“Sherlock? Come on up. First floor.” The familiar voice of Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade, distorted by the staticky speaker next to the door, squawked at them. There was a buzzing and the inner door unlocked.  
  
John followed his flatmate up a flight of stairs. The door, which had a brass “C” screwed onto it, was immediately opened by Lestrade himself. They entered a small hallway.   
  
“Thanks for coming,” Lestrade said. His voice was low; rough. “Come on. It’s this way.” He led them to the right. They turned a corner. Down a long hallway, there were two partially open doors and, blocking the end of the hallway, a closed door.  
  
There was an ominous double trail of narrow, red tire marks and footprints leading from a closed door all the way down the hall to the flat door.  
  
Lestrade took a deep breath and pushed the door open. It swung away from them and revealed—a blood bath. Sherlock didn’t appear to react at all, but John sucked in his breath a bit. He had seen plenty of terrible things during his army service, and subsequently during his time with the world’s only consulting detective, but somehow coming across that much blood in what was otherwise an apparently pristine, bright, and modern kitchen was disturbing.  
  
“Careful. The floor’s covered in it,” Lestrade commented, pointedly stepping sideways. Sherlock did the same, and John stood still in the open doorway, carefully not stepping in the tire and foot trails.  
  
The kitchen was almost square, with a typical arrangement of cabinets, sink, cooker, and fridge, two windows, and a small table with two chairs. The floor in front of the table was absolutely covered in blood, with splashes on the table. One of the chairs was tipped back onto the floor, its back legs in the blood pool. It was obvious from the number of footprints and other marks that several people had been on the scene. Sherlock made a face; useful evidence had probably been lost.  
  
There was a large lump of dough on a wooden board on the table, next to an empty mixing bowl. Somehow, the blood on the dough was particularly obscene.   
  
“What the hell happened here?” John finally burst out.  
  
Sherlock stood stock still, his eyes flashing as he swivelled his head and took in everything.  
  
“Well, in theory it was a suicide attempt…” Lestrade began.  
  
“ _Attempt?_ With that amount of blood loss?” John challenged.  
  
“Yeah. It’s a miracle she’s alive,” Lestrade agreed. “They were going to have to take her straight into surgery.”  
  
“But you think it was a _murder_ attempt,” Sherlock interrupted in a low voice.  
  
“Yeah,” Lestrade sighed. “That’s why I’m here. We always have to investigate things like this. But this time it just doesn’t… I don’t know. It just doesn’t _feel_ right. But I can’t put my finger on it.”  
  
“So you called me?” Sherlock shot at him, still looking around intently.  
  
“It’s not just that. I mean, I am capable of leading an investigation, you twat! It’s that I recognized the name and address.”  
  
“Oh?” Sherlock looked up from where he was now squatting, staring intently at the floor while carefully keeping his long coat from dragging in the blood.  
  
“Yeah. I’ve been here before, see. About nine months ago. A hit and run.”  
  
And now John would have sworn that the detective inspector looked guilty.  
  
“Explain.” Sherlock stood up and examined the sink and the counter surrounding it.  
  
“You might have read about it,” Lestrade began fitfully. “The victim was a bit famous; some kind of inventor engineer or something.”  
  
“William Atkinson,” Sherlock supplied, now opening a drawer.  
  
“Yeah!” Lestrade was a bit surprised, but only a bit. “He was hit by a transit van on his way to work.”  
  
“God. That’s awful. Did you get who did it?” John rubbed his hand over his mouth.  
  
“No. It was half seven on a foggy morning. No witnesses. No leads. No useful video—just some grainy shit. All we know for sure is that there were two people in the vehicle.”  
  
Sherlock, still with his back to them, piped up. “It was a grey transit van going approximately 50 miles per hour down a very narrow alley. He must have heard it coming; he was headed down the alley but it hit him on his left side, so he probably turned back to look. It was a tight fit. They couldn’t turn around. They had to reverse out.”  
  
“You been hacking into Yard records again? You weren’t involved in that one.”  
  
John shot Sherlock a frown and asked, “Did he die instantaneously?” He wasn’t entirely sure which of the two men he was asking at this point.  
  
“No. Not quite.” That was Lestrade.  
  
“So the driver and the passenger both just—left him? Was he robbed?”  
  
“No. But they did search him.” That was Sherlock.  
  
“But that’s…” John spluttered, horrified.  
  
“Yeah.” Lestrade sounded a bit defeated.  
  
“And now who–”  
  
“His widow,” Sherlock interrupted, looking out the kitchen window, his shoulders tense.  
  
“Yeah,” Lestrade confirmed quietly. “Jordan Atkinson. She was found by a neighbour.”  
  
Sherlock suddenly shoved past John and headed back down the hallway. John rolled his eyes and they followed. They went all the way down the hall and stepped through an archway into the sitting room. Sherlock swept the room with his eyes, absorbing data like a sponge.  
  
It was roomy and quite nice. It contained a low-backed 3-seater sofa and matching 2-seater, placed to form an L. The 3-seater faced the windows, with a coffee table in front of it and a flat-screen television mounted between the windows. A large Oriental carpet tidily defined the entire sitting area. To one side was what looked like a dining table, but it had an office chair pulled up to it; from the papers and other items piled on it, it was obviously used as a desk. It also had a carpet under it.  
  
There were book cases everywhere, most of them floor to ceiling and all full to overflowing, with double layers of the smaller books and some books shoved crossways along the tops of others. There was a sideboard decorated with framed photos and in a small alcove was a digital keyboard. The entire room had an airy feel to it due to the windows, which were enormous.  
  
Sherlock paused to look intently at the clutter on the desk. John, following his gaze, noted a cardboard box that had once held copy paper on the chair. It was empty. Sherlock then doubled back, heading down the hall. He selected one of the partially open doors, pushing it to reveal a large bedroom. Like the sitting room, it was also tastefully decorated. And it was a mess.  
  
Every drawer seemed to be at least partially open; the contents either heaped up in it or on the floor. There was a large cupboard with three doors, all open. There were some plastic storage boxes on the floor just outside one of them. None of the lids were closed properly, items spilling out messily.  
  
Sherlock took one long look, then dashed down the hall to the next door. It opened to another fair-sized room. This space was apparently set up as a sort of combined office and art studio or workroom. John noticed a large table partially covered in tiny baskets with ribbons tied to their handles. There were stacks of clear plastic tubs against a wall, each full of all sorts of colourful things; he saw a multitude of artificial flowers. There was a clever sort of rack mounted on the side of the table that held multiple spools of shiny ribbon, one matching the bows on the baskets. Most of the tubs were labelled in tidy lettering—the marker ink was purple. There was a small desk that held a laptop and the usual things one found on a desk: a stapler (also purple), pencil holder (covered in a floral-print fabric), and the like. On the wall above the desk was a pretty cork board covered in lists and a large calendar, and another board with crisscrossed ribbons that held a multitude of photos.  
  
“Ha!” Sherlock exclaimed.  
  
“What?” Lestrade said, tiredly.  
  
“Tell me what happened,” the younger man countered, looking intently at the detective inspector, his strange grey eyes gleaming.  
  
“Well, not much to tell. Someone—a woman who lives in a flat downstairs—called 999 to report a serious suicide attempt; a woman had slashed her wrist and was bleeding out. Ambulance dispatched; took her to University College Hospital A & E. She was in shock and unconscious—massive blood loss, obviously—but there’s a chance she’ll pull through if they could get her sewn up.”  
  
“Which flat is the neighbour in?” Sherlock demanded, heading toward the door.  
  
“Hang on, you wanker! I have to go with you.” The DI strode after him.  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

It was not, perhaps, one of Sherlock’s more brilliant moments, John reflected a short time later as he comforted the softly weeping woman.   
  
“When is he ever going to learn?” Lestrade fumed aloud.  
  
“He can be quite charming when he wants to be,” the doctor pointed out to him, patting her shoulder. “It’s a bit frightening, actually—the way he can turn it on and off.”  
  
“Oh, I can just imagine,” the woman surprised them both by saying, her voice still wobbly. John squatted down by her chair so he could see her face. “Oh, I’ll be all right. It wasn’t really him that got me going—although he is a very rude young man—but it just got me thinking about poor Jordan again. All that blood. I had no idea she was so unhappy. She seemed to be doing all right—since her husband died, I mean. Do you know about that?”  
  
“Yes, we do,” Lestrade responded quietly.  
  
“You know, she never really stopped. Kept right up with her work and all. She might have seemed a bit down at times, you know, and who could blame her, but I honestly… if I had realized…” and she shed a few more tears before collecting herself again. “Thank you,” she said to John, who had found and handed her a box of tissues. “I mean, I see her every Wednesday. She’s lost some weight, and sometimes she seems a bit low, but other than that… I had no idea. I would have gotten her to talk to someone otherwise. You know, a therapist or someone.”  
  
“Of course you would have,” John consoled.  
  
Lestrade glanced toward the door, obviously wanting to follow Sherlock, who, after his overly brusque interrogation, had abruptly returned to the upstairs flat. John noticed and tipped his chin toward it. “Go on. Who knows what he’ll get himself into on his own. I’ll be up in a bit.”  
  
“Thank you so much for your time,” the DI remembered to mumble as he headed out.  
  
The neighbour had actually proven to be a useful and articulate witness before Sherlock had demolished her. She had gone upstairs, concerned because Jordan had apparently missed their Wednesday-morning traditional second cup of coffee with something that she had just baked. “Ten o’clock like clockwork; so reliable,” was the comment. “So after an hour, I got worried, you know.”  
  
She didn’t know if the flat had been locked or not, as she had taken her spare key (they each had a copy of the other’s key; Sherlock had rolled his eyes at this nicety) and used it without checking the knob first. She had called out, and when she received no reply, she had gone directly to the kitchen, and course that was the only room she had been in. Jordan had been on the floor. There was blood—so much blood, she had sighed—and the younger woman was lying in the middle of it.  
  
“Was she actually lying down? On her back or her side?” Sherlock demanded.  
  
“Well… on her side. Yes. She was lying on her left side. I didn’t roll her over. I didn’t think being on her back was a good idea. That recovery position, you know.” John had nodded encouragingly. “I rang 999 right away.”  
  
“From your mobile or hers?”  
  
“They have a phone line in the flat. There’s a phone in the kitchen.” Sherlock had nodded; he had noted it.  
  
“Did she say anything to you? Anything at all?”  
  
“No. She was unconscious. I tried rousing her…” she had faded off a bit at that point, and her soft blue eyes had filled with tears.  
  
“Fine. Fine!” Sherlock snarled at her. “Did you leave her at any point?”  
  
“Just for a few seconds, to let the emergency responders into the flat.”  
  
He had frowned at this, looming over her as she sat on a kitchen chair. “What about when you let them into the building?”  
  
She thought about it for a second. “Why… no. I didn’t leave her to buzz them into the building. I didn’t have to. They came right to the door of the flat. Maybe someone else did?”  
  
Sherlock paused at this and looked at her intently. “Was the oven on?” he finally asked, slowly and deliberately. The woman blinked in surprise.  
  
“Why, yes. It was. I shut it off after they… when they were putting her in the ambulance.”  
  
At this point Sherlock had leaned rather menacingly over her, and John had taken a step forward, a warning hand setting lightly on Sherlock’s arm. “Did it even _occur_ to you to try to perform any first aid?” he finally spat out. “Or did you just sit there and let her bleed out?”  
  
“I told you… I didn’t… didn’t…”  
  
And Sherlock had raced out of the flat as the poor woman burst into tears.  
  
*  
  
Lestrade had stormed up the stairs after Sherlock, fuming.  
  
“When the _hell_ will you learn not to be so rude!” he shouted as soon as he caught sight of him rummaging through some things on the desk in the sitting room.  
  
“Isn’t that John’s job?” Sherlock had responded coolly.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Isn’t it John’s job to shout at me for being rude? You usually cover inappropriate treatment of evidence and breaking and entering.”  
  
John re-entered the flat, going directly to Sherlock and smacking him on the back of the head. “You prick!” he fumed. “When the _hell_ will you learn not to be so rude?”  
  
“Thank you, John,” the dark-haired man replied calmly. “Order has been restored to the universe.” John gave him an odd look and Lestrade an odder one when the DI snorted a bit.  
  
Lestrade’s mobile chimed. He rolled his eyes at the interruption, then frowned as he saw the caller ID. “Lestrade,” he barked out. He listened, and John observed as his lined face changed from annoyed to concerned to dismayed in just a few seconds. Shit, John thought to himself.  
  
“All right. Yeah, that makes it official. Get a team over here, now.” He hit “end call” and shoved his mobile brutally into his pocket. “She didn’t make it—died before they could even get her on the table,” he reported flatly.  
  
“I need to see her.”  
  
“Sherlock!” John sputtered.  
  
“John, I think that this was not only a murder _meant_ to look like a suicide, but was also meant to cover up an attempted robbery. _I need to see her.”_  
  
Lestrade and John exchanged looks of worry and frustration but both followed him out, almost running to keep up with his long strides. Lestrade was on his mobile at the same time, speaking in clipped tones to someone. “Her body’s on the way to the hospital morgue first. I’ll drive,” he then said, pointing to his car.  
  
“Fine,” Sherlock grunted, folding himself quickly into the passenger seat. John dove into the back and they took off.  
  



	3. Chapter 3

Predictably, there was a small struggle. The pathologist on duty in the hospital’s morgue was not unsurprisingly reluctant to let them see the body, which had just been rolled in from A & E. Lestrade flashed his badge and barked out official and intimidating phrases until the woman gave in. She still wasn’t very happy—if it was an official inquiry there would be so much more paperwork.  
  
Sherlock was positively vibrating by the time the gurney was wheeled into position. She was covered with a simple sheet. The pathologist folded it back, exposing her to the waist.  
  
John was struck by how white she was. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but she looked like she was made of paper. She hadn’t even been prepped for surgery. John could see that blood was caked in her hair and on her skin. She was still wearing the clothes that she had died in—they could see a man’s button shirt, open and revealing her bare chest.  
  
Sherlock strode to the table and bent over her, snapping on some gloves. He reached down and gently lifted her left arm, frowning at it. It was heavily bandaged; the emergency medical personnel had done their best to stem the bleeding as soon as they had gotten on the scene.  
  
“Sherlock!” John hissed.  
  
“I need to see her wounds,” Sherlock stated tightly.  
  
John sighed and looked over at Lestrade, who shrugged.  
  
“Oh, all right,” John huffed, gloving up. He grabbed scissors from a tray of instruments, leaned in front of Sherlock, and very carefully cut the bandage away from her arm. It fell away to reveal a horrible wound that stretched straight across the underside of her left forearm. Lestrade shook his head as if trying to clear it.  
  
“She didn’t do this to herself,” Sherlock growled. “That’s certain.”  
  
Sherlock leaned over John and pulled the sleeve of her shirt up with graceful gloved fingers, exposing her upper arm. John froze in place, his hand protectively hovering over the wound as his flatmate reached across the still form of the woman and pulled her right arm out from under the sheet, then delicately twitched that sleeve up. His long fingers brushed her collar and ashy blond, shoulder-length hair away from the left side of her neck. John grimaced slightly as it stuck to the dried blood.  
  
“Is this all she was wearing?” he asked the room at large.  
  
“Yes,” the pathologist responded. “Just the shirt and her underwear.”  
  
“I need to see her legs and feet,” he murmured to John. He reached forward.  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Please,” Sherlock said tightly, his hand on the sheet.  
  
“I’ll do it,” John snapped back. He sighed and gently folded the sheet down, exposing her all the way to her feet.  
  
Sherlock and John both looked down at her legs.  
  
“That’s enough,” Sherlock said suddenly, pulling back.  
  
Lestrade looked over and sucked his breath in through his teeth, biting his lower lip.  
  
Both thighs, from knee to hip, were covered with what was probably hundreds of neatly aligned cuts, fresh ones on top of old ones, some scars a ghostly pinkish-white and others a vivid mauve. There were a few that were raw and still open; probably no more than a few days old.  
  
“I think we should go now,” John said quietly.  
  
Sherlock nodded wordlessly and exited the room before John had finished pulling the sheet up again.  
  
*  
  
The detective was standing at Lestrade’s car waiting for them by the time they caught up with him. His head was down, his hands jammed deep into his coat pockets and his shoulders hunched. The look on his face was intense; haunted. He looked up when they approached.  
  
“I need to go back to her flat,” he stated. “And have the body sent over the Bart’s. I trust Molly Hooper far more than any other pathologist.”  
  
“What? Why?” Lestrade spat out. “They’re right. All those cuts—she obviously was suicidal.”  
  
“No. She. Was. Not.” Sherlock was getting a very dark—a very _dangerous_ —tone to his voice. John reached up and patted the small of his back.  
  
“Come on, Sherlock,” he said so quietly that Lestrade could barely hear him. “I know this is rough, but…”  
  
“But _what?_ ” Sherlock snarled at him suddenly. “Don’t be such an idiot, John. You of all people _do_ know better.” And then he clamped his mouth shut and looked away from both of them.  
  
“Can we go back to her flat?” John asked Lestrade wearily.  
  
Lestrade sighed deeply. “I suppose. Just for a bit, if it’s that important to him. But I’ve got a forensics team there now.”  
  
“You said yourself something didn’t seem right,” John replied. “Your instincts aren’t usually wrong.”  
  
Lestrade nodded slowly as he unlocked the car for them. “Yeah. I guess. I still don’t know _why,_ though.” They got in, Sherlock rather dazedly, and the DI pulled into traffic.  
  
“Well, that’s why you’ve got him,” John offered, a small smile on his lips as he jerked his head toward his flatmate.  
  



	4. Chapter 4

When they re-entered the flat, John was a bit disheartened to discover that Sergeant Sally Donovan was heading up the crime scene crew that was there. The door to the kitchen was propped open and John could see camera flashes. Donovan looked up to greet the DI, but wrinkled her nose as Sherlock walked in. “Oh, Christ. Did you have to bring The Freak in on this one?” she whined. Lestrade put up his hand angrily.  
  
“Enough. Yes. What have you found?”  
  
“Lots of blood. Obviously,” she replied with disgust. “Anderson is getting some pictures now. Nothing else.”  
  
Sherlock made a slightly strangled sound. John laid a hand on his elbow warningly. “Nothing else?! Are you all blind as well as idiotic?” Sherlock spat out. John grasped his elbow more pointedly now. Sherlock tried to shake it off, but the doctor shook his head sharply and held on.  
  
“Look,” Lestrade responded fitfully. “Walk us through it, huh?”  
  
“She was baking. She wasn’t expecting anyone, but someone—two people—came to the flat door. She hadn’t buzzed them into the building. She let them into the flat and went back into the kitchen. They followed her. The taller one—quite a bit taller than the victim—tied her to a chair with a belt. Arms down, against the back of the chair. And gagged her with a tea towel. Gagged her first, actually, or she would have been screaming her head off. Tied her legs to the legs of the chair as well. While the other person began searching the flat.”  
  
“How did…?” Lestrade asked.  
  
Sherlock rolled his eyes.  
  
“She was obviously working with that dough—she was making something for the neighbour. She was wearing only pants and a shirt—not expecting company. They didn’t buzz from downstairs or she probably would have put something more on. She had marks on the corners of her mouth from the towel, which has since been tossed to the floor in front of the sink. Shouldn’t Anderson do something useful and bag that? There’ll be her saliva. There were parallel marks on her upper arms from something fairly thin and sharp—a belt. A woman’s belt. Men’s belts are generally not that narrow. Marks on her ankles. The angle of the cut on her arm…” Sherlock paused, almost unperceptively. “It was supposed to look as if she had slashed her own wrist, but the angle was off. And the knife was wrong. Where’s the knife? (Anderson pointed; it was in an evidence bag on the counter.) And—God, can’t you _see_ it, any of you? Why would she suddenly stop rolling out dough, grab a knife from a rack that she probably couldn’t even reach–how do you think she did that, Donovan? She’s barely five feet tall and the footstool (he pointed to a folding one hanging neatly on the wall) wasn’t out–and slice open her own wrist? Was the dough _not to her liking?_ ” He shut his eyes and blew air out, exasperated. He pointed to the magnetic knife rack that was mounted on the wall next to the sink. One blank spot on the top row stood out. “Clearly, someone at least my height and quite strong did this, then left her to… left her to help the other person search the flat.”  
  
“Two people?” Lestrade prodded.  
  
He opened his eyes again.  
  
“Amateurs. And very different from one another. One is methodical. He started at the desk first—he began with what was in that box—the copy paper one— and he made piles as he went through things—then in the bedroom he opened each drawer, sifted through it. He’d worked his way nearly around the room when the second person—the woman—joined him. She’s chaotic. Messy. The lesser portion of drawers, starting on the other side of the room, has just been tossed on the floor. Sloppy.”  
  
“Amateurs?” John prodded.  
  
“They must have been making a huge amount of noise. Professionals wouldn’t have risked attracting attention to themselves.” Lestrade nodded in agreement with this. “And they would have realized that there would be ligature marks, even from something soft like the tea towels.”  
  
“And what were they looking for?”  
  
“I don’t know yet. Obviously something of great value.”  
  
He strode back down the hall and into the sitting room. He approached the desk; his eyes swept over it again.  
  
“I think it had to do with W… her husband.”  
  
“What!? Sherlock, hang on,” Lestrade sputtered. “You think that a hit-and-run nine months ago is somehow linked to a home invasion and knife attack?”  
  
“That doesn’t make much sense,” John agreed reluctantly.  
  
“Can you explain how they’re supposedly linked?” The DI challenged.   
  
Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I’m good, but I’m not that good. You might give me a few minutes. Considering you’ve had nine months to figure out the first half.”  
  
“Oi!”  
  
“Think about it. Two people in the transit van. Two people in the flat.”  
  
“That could just be a coincidence!”  
  
“Do you know what my brother says about coincidences? The universe is rarely so lazy.”  
  
“What the fuck does that mean?” Lestrade ran his hand through his hair.  
  
Sherlock looked loftily at him, then wandered over to one of the bookcases, his eyes flicking over the titles on display. The DI opened his mouth to say something. Sherlock held up his hand. “Oh, do shut up.”  
  
Sherlock spent the next twenty minutes examining the book cases, deliberately keeping his back to everyone.  
  
John spent the next twenty minutes watching Sherlock.   
  
Lestrade split his time between supervising his team and watching John watch Sherlock.  
  
Finally, the forensics team gathered their equipment and cleared out. Lestrade gave some final instructions to the constable who would be left to watch the flat, then looked around in some concern. “Sherlock? John?” he called out.  
  
“In here, Greg,” John’s voice rang out from the bathroom. Curious, the DI went to the door of the tiled room. And frowned. Sherlock was seated on the floor, his back against the tub, his legs pulled up. His elbows were on his knees and his chin rested on his tented fingers. His coat—that ludicrous, show-off great damn coat of his—was spread around him like a carpet. John stood near him, leaning against the sink and looking down at his mate in concern. When the DI came to the door he glanced up at the silver-haired man. Lestrade shot him a questioning look and John shot him a look of puzzlement in return, shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head in negation. “ _No idea_ ,” he mouthed.  
  
“We’re about done here,” Lestrade ventured. Sherlock showed no indication that he had heard him. Instead, he reached out one hand and muttered something, mouthing words to himself.  
  
“Yeah? Okay. Sherlock? Hey. Come on. We’re heading out.”  
  
Sherlock pulled his hand back to himself and slowly tilted his head toward the doctor. “What? Oh… oh. I… John… I’ve got to…”  
  
And in a swift move that startled both other men, the detective suddenly hauled himself to his feet and in one long stride shoved past them, down the hall, and out of the flat.  
  
There was a pause as Lestrade and John stared at each other. Even for Sherlock that had been a bit odd. “Is he all right?” the DI finally asked.  
  
“I honestly don’t know this time. He was looking at all those books, and then he came in here.”  
  
Lestrade looked down at where Sherlock had been sitting. “How long was he in here alone?” he whispered.   
  
“A few minutes. Why…” Then John caught sight of what Lestrade was looking at. “Oh, fuck,” he exhaled. Sitting on the tile floor was a razor, encrusted in what almost certainly was blood. “I’ve got to go.”  
  
“I’m right behind you,” Lestrade responded grimly.  
  
*  
  
Upon reaching the street, neither of them had been surprised to discover a decided lack of consulting detective. “Shit!” John shouted. “Why does he do this?” He raked his hand through his hair in frustration.  
  
“Is it even worth trying to find him?” Lestrade wondered, gazing up and down the pavement.  
  
“No. I don’t know. I mean, it’s not worth trying to follow him. If I have to go look for him, I know where to go. Chances are he’s headed back to our flat, though.”  
  
“Yeah?” Lestrade sounded surprised.  
  
“He needs to think. The flat’s quiet. Safe.”   
  
They both stood silently for a few seconds, thinking about what the doctor had just said.  
  
“Safe?” the DI finally repeated quietly. “Safe from what?”  
  
“Can you–”  
  
“–I’ll drive you.”  
  
John pulled his mobile out of his pocket as soon as he was in the car, swiftly entering a text. He hit Send as Lestrade pulled out.   
  
*  
  
John entered the flat quietly. Sherlock was standing at the window, looking out but not noticing what was going on in the street below him.   
  
John cleared his throat. “Sherlock?” he said to the back of the man’s head.   
  
He waited. No reply.  
  
He shucked his jacket, tossing it onto the sofa and crossing the room to put a hand on Sherlock’s elbow. “Sherlock?” he said again, very softly.  
  
There was a long silence. Sherlock let his head fall forward, pressing his forehead to the window glass. John waited, his hand still wrapped around the bony arm.  
  
“It wasn’t suicide,” the dark-haired man said suddenly, so low that John barely heard it.  
  
John rubbed his arm. “I know that,” he responded soothingly. “Greg knows that.”  
  
“Just because someone cuts themselves doesn’t mean that they intend to kill themselves.”  
  
“It’s all right,” John soothed. He brought himself up close behind the taller man, then carefully reached around his waist, nestling into his back. At first he just rested his forehead between Sherlock’s shoulder blades, and then he turned his head. With his left cheek pressed against the fabric of Sherlock’s jacket, he shut his eyes and took a breath. “I’m sorry you had to see that. I know it’s hard.”  
  
They stood like that for a while. Every muscle in Sherlock’s body was tense. John just waited.  
  
“She had at one point, though,” Sherlock finally said.  
  
John opened his eyes but didn’t move. “What do you mean?”  
  
“There was a scar on her arm. It was old; faint. I think that _was_ intentional.”  
  
“That’s how you knew the angle was wrong?” John prodded, trying to move Sherlock away from his internal thoughts and back towards the case.  
  
“Mmm.”  
  
John pulled away and tugged at Sherlock’s hand, aiming them toward the sofa. The younger man didn’t resist. He sat next to the doctor, then pulled his long legs up, his forehead resting on his knees. “This is too close for you. You can’t be objective. Tell Lestrade what you have so far and walk away. He’ll understand.”  
  
Sherlock made an exasperated noise in his throat. “But _I_ won’t understand. John, there’s so much more to this. I’m _positive_ that her death and her husband’s are linked. I need to know why, and who.”  
  
John sat for a few minutes longer. Then resolve replaced the anxiety on his expressive face. He withdrew his hand from Sherlock’s neck, which he had been unconsciously rubbing, and stood up.  
  
“Well, why don’t I finish making that quiche?” he said aloud, in his most brisk, army-captain voice. And marched into the kitchen, resolutely snapping on the cooker, washing his hands, and sliding the cold liquid quiche, which was none the worse for its wait, from the fridge into the oven. There was silence from his mate, and that was really all John expected at the moment. It was fine.  
  



	5. Chapter 5

Greg Lestrade sighed as he pulled away from the kerb and Dr John Watson walked briskly away with a brief wave. John had assured him that it was fine to drop him at Baker Street and that he’d be in touch.  
  
They hadn’t said much in the car, and Greg was acutely aware that they had to, at some point, address the “elephant in the room.” The room being the whole of their and Sherlock’s combined lives and the elephant being Sherlock. Or more specifically, Sherlock’s behaviour. Or to be completely precise, Sherlock’s drug and cutting habits, triggers for those, and the likelihood that the razor that Lestrade now had in an evidence bag in his pocket was covered in Sherlock’s blood. The doctor was mortified that he had left the detective to his own devices for even a few minutes. The DI had shaken his head emphatically, both to reassure John that whatever might be the case it was not his fault and more importantly that the blood was much more likely to be Jordan Atkinson’s. After all, it was her bathroom, and both of them had seen that she… that she was in the habit of… but that ultimately she had not… Greg shook his head as he wound his way through the streets of London to his home.  
  
He gratefully parked his car and dragged himself into his flat, tossing his coat in the general direction of the coat rack and not bothering to pick it up when he missed. He opened his freezer, grabbed a ready-made meal, and tossed it in the microwave before kicking off his shoes. He stripped as he wandered to his bedroom, pulling on a t-shirt and old, worn jeans. He stepped into his tidy bathroom and washed his face and hands thoroughly, running his wet palms over his hair until it spiked up. He stared at the bags under his eyes in the mirror for a moment.  
  
The microwave beeped and with a sigh he shuffled back into the kitchen, dumping the hot meal onto a plate in a practiced move. He grabbed a can of lager and popped it open with one hand and, thus armed, practically fell onto his worn sofa. He dropped the lager on the table, picked up the remote, and flicked the telly on, wearily flipping through channels until he found something that seemed mindless enough but not idiotic. _Top Gear,_ as it turned out. Despite everything, he grinned the tiniest bit. Resolutely, and before he could fall asleep, he began to shovel the whatever-meal-it-was into his mouth. And sighed.  
  
The DI had seen a great deal of violence in his years working his way through the ranks at Scotland Yard. Most of it had been inelegant; brutal but not terribly complicated. Gang wars, domestic disturbances, plenty of accidents and muggings.  
  
But he had also seen a handful of cases involving violence that had had an entirely different and disturbing feel to them. Cases of kidnapping; torture. And those of simple, pure anguish. Those had always bothered him; haunted him. For every hundred common thugs he happily handcuffed, for the multitudes of corpses he had watched hauled away in body bags, what came to him sometimes at night were the other ones: a barely 16-year-old girl, handcuffed to a radiator, her rotting body covered in cigarette burns. The middle-aged wife of a wealthy man, found in a car boot when a ransom drop went wrong. A young man with dark curls and pale skin, shaking from withdrawal, the scalpel with which he had just sliced the skin over his hip three times falling to the floor as his long fingers trembled.  
  
Yes, Greg Lestrade knew that cutting wasn’t a suicide attempt. He knew what it was.  
  
When his mobile alerted him to a text, he dragged himself up and dug his phone out of his coat pocket, this time actually hanging up his coat. He wasn’t surprised to see that it was from John.   
  


> He wants to go to William Atkinson’s office

Lestrade sighed and texted back. The low buzzing in his head–the buzzing that had started when he realized who Jordon Atkinson was–was getting louder. Sherlock saw a connection between the hit and run and the attack. Now he wanted to see it.

> I’ll make arrangements in the morning to meet you there. Get him to sleep. 

He hit Send and he would have been hard pressed, had someone else been there, to deny that the corners of his eyes had gotten just very slightly moist.

*

_Ha,_ John thought, reading Greg’s message. “Get him to sleep?” he asked himself aloud. He hung up his jacket and Sherlock’s coat, which had been tossed on his chair by the fireplace, then returned to the kitchen to check on the quiche. Takeaway might have been faster, he reflected, but he didn’t like to waste food and it was at least marginally healthier than Chinese.

He glanced over at Sherlock, who was sitting at the desk, hunched over a laptop, fingers flying across the keys.

He pursed his lips and frowned, then with grim determination took down two bowls and two plates. He efficiently prepared two salads, topping them with a somewhat sweet salad dressing that he was not exactly passionate about but Sherlock seemed to like so he purchased and used just to simplify things. Just as he was pulling forks from the drawer, the timer on the cooker dinged. Donning an oven mitt, he extracted a rather lovely if-he-did-say-so-himself quiche from the cooker.

Two bowls of salad on the table. Two forks. Two plates with steaming-hot quiche. After a moment’s thought, an ale for himself and a glass of milk for Sherlock. He sat down with a contented sigh, then looked up toward the desk in the other room.

John opened his mouth to invite the detective to join him, then thought better of it. It wasn’t worth the argument sometimes. He would just eat and if Sherlock noticed and happened to join him, that would be fine. He propped his current book open next to his plate and resolutely took a bite of the quiche.

Half an hour later, John sighed and put the leftovers into the fridge. Sherlock hadn’t said a word or moved from in front of the computer. Returning to the sitting room, John glanced over his friend’s shoulder. Sherlock had several browser windows open and was apparently reading all of them simultaneously. John couldn’t see exactly what some of them were, but William Atkinson’s obituary, complete with a photo, stood out.

“Sherlock,” he finally said hesitantly. The only response was the slightest flinch of the man’s head. “Greg’ll make us an appointment to meet at William Atkinson’s office in the morning. All right then. I’m going to bed. There’s food in the fridge. Try to get some sleep.” He put his hand out to pat the younger man’s shoulder, then, hand halted in mid-air, thought better of it. Instead he walked wearily into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and headed up to his bedroom.

Ten minutes after John had gone upstairs, Sherlock shook his head and looked around. “John?”

Receiving no reply, he grunted and returned to staring at his monitor.


	6. Chapter 6

John was surprised. “Tube station first?”  
  
“William Atkinson took the Tube to work. He was supposedly hit while walking from the station to his office. I want to see where it happened.”  
  
John nodded. That made sense. They made their way from the entrance to the station down the busy street, Sherlock glancing keenly from right to left. He noted with a wave of his hand a coffee stand, its significance lost on John. “Here,” he exclaimed suddenly, turning a corner. And then another. They found themselves in a narrow cul-de-sac.   
  
John frowned. “Isn’t his office back that way?” he faltered.  
  
“Exactly. But this—right here—is where he was hit.” Sherlock was walking swiftly deeper into the alley. He halted suddenly and made a quarter turn to his left. “This alley isn’t in a direct line between the Tube station and his work. There was no reason for him to be here. He got his coffee at that stand. He dropped it at the entrance to the alley. He was trying to get away from someone. Someone who knew his habits and knew where they could find him at half past seven on a foggy morning.”  
  
John caught up with him, stopping and mimicking his quarter turn, staring deliberately out to the end of the alley. He could picture the grey transit van filling the entire space. “God. He knew that he was trapped,” he murmured.  
  
“I don’t imagine he thought that they would actually hit him, though.”  
  
*  
  
They were ushered into a cluttered office. A desk and two tables were equally covered with files, papers, rolls of blueprints, books, small pieces of equipment, and John saw at least two laptops in addition to the computer tower and two large monitors that dominated the desk. The middle-aged man behind the desk rose, came around to the front of it, and shook Lestrade’s hand, then John’s. Sherlock kept his hands in his coat pockets and stared at the ceiling, which didn’t seem to bother the man in the slightest.  
  
“Please, have a seat,” he invited, waving his hand at two chairs. Sherlock hung back, leaning against the door frame, now dropping his chin down to his chest, so the DI and the doctor took the offered seats. The office walls were mostly glass, so although the room offered privacy with the door shut, it also offered a view of the entire floor of the building, which otherwise was open space divided by some low and some taller partitions.  
  
“I’m Leonard Wiggins,” the man said, returning to his own chair behind the desk. He was a bit plump, with what hair he had, in a dignified fringe around the back of his head, just turning grey. He had reading glasses pushed down his snub nose and was wearing khakis, a white shirt with the sleeves turned up, and braces. “How can I help you?”  
  
“Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade,” Lestrade introduced himself and handed him a business card. “This is Doctor John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. We’re here about William Atkinson.”  
  
“William? Why? Do you have a lead on who hit him?” Wiggins leaned forward eagerly, sincere concern and eagerness on his face.  
  
“We’re not sure just yet. Possibly. Can you answer a few questions?”  
  
“Certainly. Anything to help. I know it’s been months, but I still think about him every day.” Wiggins looked expectantly at the DI.  
  
“Thank you. Was Mr. Atkinson working on anything particularly special or sensitive when he was killed?”  
  
“No. Not here, anyway. We handle commercial and residential architecture—both renovations and new construction. William was a supervisor, but his real talent—well, he was a brilliant trouble-shooter. He could just look at plans someone had been working on for a month and in five minutes point out any problems. We usually left him to do that and the trickier jobs. He wasn’t very fond of the more mundane projects. He’d get bored.”  
  
“What did you mean by ‘not here’?” Sherlock murmured. Wiggins looked startled; the tall, pale man leaning against his doorframe had actually closed his eyes and looked as if he hadn’t been listening to a word.  
  
“Well, William was really quite brilliant, you know—much more than an architect. He had an engineering degree. He was working on something to do with surgical remote robotics and prosthetics. On his own.”  
  
“Remote robotics?” Lestrade echoed.  
  
“Robotic arms, if you will. They currently allow a surgeon to perform incredibly delicate, controlled moves during surgery. The surgeon doesn’t even have to be in the room with the patient and the equipment—with the right equipment, a surgeon anywhere in the world can operate remotely. They’ve been around for a while, but William had been perfecting some amazing feedback programming.”  
  
“I read about that!” John exclaimed. “Something to do with allowing the surgeon to actually _feel_ what was going on with the patient, quite literally as if they were in the same room.”  
  
Wiggins nodded. “It’s mainly for surgery now, but if it became more affordable technology, it could be used by any doctor. Someone sitting in an office in London could just as effectively examine and treat patients in Africa as actually going there.”  
  
“That’s incredible,” John murmured. “Imagine the lives that could be saved.”  
  
“And he was interested in improving biocompatible prosthetics.”  
  
“Huh?” Lestrade grunted.  
  
“Artificial limbs that connect directly to and are directed by the nervous system. He had a deep, personal interest in them.”  
  
“Why?” Lestrade asked. He had taken out his notebook and was jotting some things down.  
  
“Well, his younger brother lost his leg fighting in Afghanistan. He became determined to improve the technology. It was all related—the feedback from the artificial limb, you see. Now the limbs can receive impulses from the nervous system, but not in reverse.”  
  
“Wouldn’t that make him a…” Lestrade fumbled.  
  
“Biomedical engineer,” John supplied.  
  
“Why didn’t he work at a firm that specialized in that?” Lestrade asked.  
  
“He only started working on it when Scott—his brother—was injured. He’d already been working here for years. It wasn’t conflict of interest as far as we were concerned, and he never, as far as I know, spent a minute of his work time on it.”  
  
“What were his work habits?” Lestrade asked.  
  
“Beyond dedicated. Rather alarming, actually. He’d usually be here from eight in the morning until six o’clock; barely stop for lunch when he was really involved in something. Not the most social man in the world. He’d talk with Peter—one of our best renovators—but not really anyone else. No standing around chatting about football. I gathered he was equally driven when working on his private projects.” Wiggins smiled a sad little smile as if recalling something sweet. “About the only thing that could distract him was Jordan.”  
  
“His wife?” Lestrade asked for the sake of clarity.  
  
Wiggins nodded at the DI. “Oh, _she_ is a pip! Such a very different person. He was so quiet, and she’s this… well, lively, sweet little thing who would swoop in some days with a huge basket of all these lovely things she had baked, get everyone else laughing and eating. Then she’d get very serious, walk up behind William, and just _demand_ that he stop working for half a sec to eat. And every single time, he would stop working, stand up, sort of tower over her, and she’d _feed_ him. Literally take bits of food and put them in his mouth. Honestly, I know it’s a bit odd to say about an employee, but it was really quite adorable. They adored each other. We’re still in touch with her—especially Peter.”  
  
Sherlock made a noise in his throat.  
  
“Is she aware that you’re inquiring about all this?” Wiggins asked suddenly, looking concerned.  
  
“Well, that’s it, really. There’s been an… accident of sorts, and it’s caused us to re-examine his case.” Lestrade grimaced at the awkwardness of his own words.  
  
“Accident? Was Jordan involved? Is she all right?”  
  
“She’s in hospital,” Lestrade answered cagily. “We can’t really say more just now.”  
  
Wiggins shook his head in disbelief. “Oh, that’s awful. What happened? Can I go see her?”  
  
“Not just yet,” Lestrade said evenly. “Can we talk to his friend—Peter, was it?”  
  
“He’s out in the field today. Can I have him phone you?”  
  
“Yeah, that’d be great,” Lestrade nodded.  
  
“How many break-ins have you had since William died?” Sherlock suddenly blurted out, looking out over the dividers and desks. Wiggins looked confused and alarmed, a fairly common reaction to Sherlock’s inquiries.  
  
“Ah… two, actually. One about eight or nine months ago, and another just a few weeks ago.”  
  
“Anything stolen?”  
  
“Not the first time. Not the second time, either, now that I think about it. Oh, except one laptop. The first time. William’s… it was William’s laptop.” His voice betrayed his dismay at not realizing the significance of this earlier.  
  
“No follow up?”  
  
“Not much. There wasn’t much to go on. Both times they somehow didn’t trip the alarm. And since the laptop was an old one of his, not one that he was using currently, and no one thought there was anything much on it, we just tried to put it behind us. All work files are stored on the server, anyway. You need a password to access anything on it.”  
  
Sherlock scowled. He stepped forward. Wiggins unconsciously leaned back in his chair as the tall man leaned rather menacingly over his desk. Sherlock’s voice started low. “So a few weeks after an employee is killed in a hit-and-run on the way into work, his laptop and nothing else was stolen from your office, then a few months later there’s another break in, with nothing stolen this time that you know of, both times the alarm wasn’t tripped, and there was no follow-up? Are you all _complete_ idiots?” The last sentence was more of a shout.  
  
“Sherlock,” John said warningly, standing up.  
  
“It’s so obvious!” the detective spat out. “How are the passwords for the server created? Where are they recorded? Who can _get at them?”_  
  
“They’re…” Wiggins started hesitantly. He swallowed. “Everyone has to create a new password every two weeks for themselves or they get locked out of the system. I don’t know what everyone does with them; they aren’t supposed to keep them written down anywhere obvious, like in their desks.”  
  
“But do they?”  
  
“I’m sure some do.”  
  
“Did William?” Lestrade queried, realizing where Sherlock was going.  
  
“No. He never needed to. He’d just come up with 15 random letters and numbers every two weeks and remember it.”  
  
“Who knew that he did that?”  
  
“Probably just me. This is a quite professional group of people working here; they didn’t talk about things like that amongst themselves.”  
  
“Are William’s files still on the server?”  
  
“Yes, of course, but I have an override for all the files. His projects were all reassigned to other designers. Split up.”  
  
“And did anyone find anything… unusual? Unexpected?” Lestrade ventured. Sherlock nodded in approval. Lestrade was definitely catching on.  
  
“Not that I know of.”  
  
“Damn.” Sherlock straightened up from where he was still looming over Wiggins’s desk and turned his back on them, running one long-fingered hand through his messy curls in frustration.  
  
And then he stopped. And practically ran out of the office, shouting over his shoulder, “Come on! If it’s not here it’s at home!”  
  
John and Lestrade both shot Leonard Wiggins sheepish looks and mumbled thanks, then dashed after the consulting detective.  
  
The man just sat at his desk, his mouth open, for nearly two minutes.  
  



	7. Chapter 7

On the way back to the Atkinsons’ flat, Sherlock was agitated. He spoke rapidly, more to himself than to the others in the car. John leaned forward to catch it all.  
  
“Whoever did this knew him. Well. Knew his schedule. Habits. Where he worked…” his voice trailed off as he drummed his fingers on his knee. “But knew his home, too. Not just a co-worker. A friend. Someone who knew his wife, as well. Knew _her_ well… knew her secret...” He fell silent. John and Lestrade kept quiet, but both looked a bit worried as Sherlock chewed on his knuckle and stared out the window.  
  
*  
  
They returned to the Atkinsons’ building. Lestrade hit the button for them to be buzzed in, and a uniformed constable opened the door to the flat when they got up the stairs.  
  
“All quiet?” Lestrade asked him.  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
“DAMN!” Sherlock fumed. “Oh, never mind. The answer is here. Somewhere…” He looked around the sitting room somewhat wildly, suddenly diving toward the table that had served as William Atkinson’s home desk. He made a satisfied sound as he grabbed a pile, slid down onto the floor, and carefully began to sort through it. “I could use a hand,” he muttered, his head down.  
  
“What are we looking for again?” Lestrade asked, first crouching and then tipping himself back to sit next to the detective.  
  
“Don’t know yet. I’ll know when I see it. This box… this would have been from his office. They boxed up his desk fairly quickly after the accident, and someone brought it personally to his widow—but not until recently.” John didn’t bother asking how Sherlock knew this, but the detective glanced up at him and sighed. “The dust, John. There’s a heavy layer of dust on the box, but no dust on anything that was inside it, and no dust on anything else in the entire flat. The box wasn’t shipped—no address label and it hadn’t been sealed shut—so someone hand-carried it here to his widow some months after the items were put inside it.”  
  
“Oh,” John replied, nodding. “Dust.”  
  
The most noticeable items were the pictures. There were three, in different, inexpensive frames. All three contained a photo of Jordan Atkinson. In one, she was dressed as a bride in a simple but delicate white frock, smiling at the camera. Her ashy blond hair was swept up in an elegant and not overly fussy way and decorated with three tiny rosebuds. In the second, she was outdoors somewhere, in jeans and a buttoned shirt, holding a bottle of beer and laughing. In the third, she was in the kitchen of the flat, bent intently over the table, doing something with a pastry bag. In that one she wore a man’s buttoned shirt, which was huge on her, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows in an almost comical fashion.  
  
The next item was a coffee mug. It was large and pink and badly stained a dark brown on the inside. Sherlock turned it in his hands.  
  
“John, come here.” John walked over as Sherlock put the mug on the table. “Pick that up and act as if you’re drinking from it.”  
  
John did so, knowing that asking why would just aggravate him. And, rather unbelievably, both Sherlock and Lestrade smiled a tiny bit when he did so. “What?” he said, pulling the mug away from his face and examining it, turning it around in his hands. Ah. Someone had drawn on the glazed bottom of the mug with a purple permanent marker. There was a heart, and inside it were the initials WA and JA. He held it in his left hand again, and tipped it toward his mouth.  
  
“He was left-handed, right?” John said. Sherlock nodded. “So every time he took a drink, everyone in his office saw that?” John smiled. “She _was_ a pip.”  
  
The next item was a rather interesting small box made of paper. It had been folded into shape and then covered with some sort of finish to make it glossy and somewhat stiff. The bottom and the top were made of different paper, and the top had some small shells glued onto it. Sherlock flipped it over. In the centre of the bottom in purple ink were the initials JHA and a date. He pulled the top off gently.  
  
Inside was a stack of business cards. He flipped through them quickly but methodically, dividing them into categories. There were several for people at software companies, medical supply companies, a few from security companies, and three for manufacturers of custom prosthetics. A few for more domestic ones—a dry cleaner and a tea shop near the office, and one for a florist that was just around the corner from the flat.  
  
Sherlock grunted and, reaching up, put them on the table, still sorted into stacks.  
  
There was a stack of cards, photos, and papers—letters, John realized. Sherlock glanced at these, but put them aside. The doctor flipped through a few of them. They were thank yous, mostly—apparently William Atkinson’s skills were especially appreciated by a great number of clients. John’s perusal was interrupted by Sherlock. “John….” he said quietly, biting his lip.  
  
“Mm?” John responded.  
  
“Go see if Molly’s done with the post-mortem.”  
  
“What? Now?”  
  
“No, next week!” Sherlock shot back angrily, glaring up at him. “Don’t be an idiot,” he snarled sarcastically.  
  
John took a deep breath and held it for a split second, pressing his lips together. When the urge to shout at the rude man at his feet passed, he shook his head. “Sure,” he acquiesced.  
  
Lestrade walked him to the flat door. “I’ll keep an eye him, ‘kay?” he assured John.  
  
“Would you? Thanks.” And with a brisk nod John squared his shoulders and marched out of the flat.  
  
*  
  
“She did a real number on herself,” the pathologist said sympathetically. “Massive loss of blood and permanent damage. It would have taken hours of surgery to repair it.”  
  
John nodded, examining the horrific gash, now cleaned of extraneous blood.  
  
“She’d probably have lost some sensation and who’s to say how much use of the hand, at least temporarily. Tendons were severed.”  
  
John swallowed. He glanced at the woman’s neck, where Sherlock had been paying particular attention. And then to her pale face. “It wasn’t suicide, by the way,” he stated finally, tearing his gaze away.  
  
“No? Hum…” Molly commented. She looked intently at the damaged arm.  
  
“Something about the angle,” John offered.  
  
“Yeah… oh, yeah. I see it now,” the quiet woman sighed. “Sometimes it takes me a while. I’m guessing Sherlock spotted it right off.”  
  
“Well, yes, but…”  
  
“It’s all right. I’ve just got started. And despite what Mr-Know-It-All thinks, I am fairly competent at my job.”  
  
“That’s what he’s counting on—why he sent me here,” John consoled.  
  
“Well, then, here goes nothing,” she murmured, opening the body bag completely. “Oh, God,” she blurted out.  
  
“Yeah, about that…” John found his eyes drawn to the cuts.  
  
*  
  
Lestrade picked up what were obviously pages torn from a colouring book. He smiled as he examined them. They had to have been done by an older child; they were precisely coloured in. He held them up and Sherlock glanced at them, frowning. “They didn’t have children,” he stated.  
  
“No. Could’ve been a friend’s kid.”  
  
“He brought them to his office in his laptop case,” the dark-haired man noted. “Look how the edges are bent.”  
  
“Not helpful, though,” the DI sighed, putting them down.  
  
“No, not helpful,” agreed his companion.  
  
*  
  
Having exhausted the contents of William Atkinson’s desk, Sherlock had gone into the bedroom. He was seated on the floor again, this time in front of the open cupboard. He began pulling the plastic containers and boxes that had been spilled out towards himself, muttering under his breath. Nothing unusual for him. Lestrade sat on the bed and watched for a few minutes. “What are you looking for?” he finally asked hesitantly.  
  
“Her attackers knew both of them. They were fairly intimate friends. Probably went on holiday together, that sort of thing. Kept souvenirs, or pictures. Sentiment.”  
  
He pulled a box toward himself, his head cocking in curiosity. Unlike all the others, this one had no label on it. He frowned and opened it. His mouth fell open.  
  
“Sherlock? What is it?”  
  
“This is… different,” he admitted, glancing up at the silver-haired man. He reached into the box and pulled out a stuffed bunny. Lestrade shrugged. His first wife had stuffed animals. He watched as the long white fingers delved into the box again. A baby blanket. All right. A toddler’s bowl and plate, decorated with cartoon characters. Hmm. Two dummies. Oh. A baby bottle. Erm... And finally, a packet of adult nappies. Shit.  
  
“What’s that all about?” he muttered, whistling and sliding down onto the floor next to Sherlock.  
  
“I’m not positive (Lestrade gave him a look), but I think the Atkinsons were involved in… I don’t know the phrase, exactly. Age play, I believe.”  
  
“What the _fuck_ is that?”  
  
“What am I, an encyclopaedia? Look it up! It’s got nothing to do with the case,” Sherlock snarled. And then the consulting detective suddenly threw everything back into the box and closed it vehemently. He shoved the box back toward the cupboard.  
  
“All right, Sherlock,” Lestrade soothed. “What about this one?” The DI indicated a plastic box neatly labelled “WILLIAM—POST UNI.”  
  
The dark-haired man next to him nodded energetically and pulled it backward until his back hit the bed behind him. He sat against the bed with the box between his legs and methodically began removing the contents, once again sorting everything into piles. Lestrade peered over with interest. There were papers, folders, photos.  
  
Sherlock paused at the photos. There were several packets of prints, labelled in a neat, precise handwriting with phrases such as “Picnic” or “Dad’s Birthday” and dates. He opened the first packet, withdrew the first photo, and turned it over.  
  
“Ah, good!” he exclaimed. The photo had been just as neatly labelled as the packets. Lestrade leaned down and Sherlock showed him the tidy inscription: names, place, date. He began flipping through the photos rapidly, muttering to himself.  
  
“What… who are you looking for… how are you going to know?” Lestrade stumbled on his words, trying desperately to keep up.  
  
“How?” Sherlock spluttered. “I told you already! Don’t you _listen_?” He continued flipping through the photos.  
  
“You… you said it was two people, one a woman. A _large_ woman.” Lestrade mused more to himself than to Sherlock, but got a quick nod of encouragement anyway. “Not sure yet how you did that, but—it doesn’t matter right now. Give me a packet.” He slid down to the floor next to Sherlock and began flipping through photos.  
  
And it was Lestrade who came across the first likely shot. The batch of photos seemed to have been taken at a picnic or some sort of outdoor party. The people in them were dressed casually in t-shirts and jeans or shorts, and squinting in the sun. William Atkinson appeared in several. He wore khakis, polished loafers, and a dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up and the top button undone. Some shots were candids, with their subjects not aware of the camera, and others had been posed. It was one of the posed shots that caught his eye. It featured four people standing in a row, two men and two women. They were all laughing and all had bottles of beer in their hands. It was one of the women that he had noticed. She was clearly over six feet tall and built like a pack player.  
  
“Sherlock,” he said, flipping it over. “Damn!”  
  
There was no notation on the back. Sherlock didn’t look fazed, though. “Yes!” he cried instead. “There they are.” Lestrade examined the photo more closely. Yes, the large woman was holding hands with the man to her right. He was about four inches shorter than she was, slightly balding, and slightly pudgy.  
  
“A couple?” he mused.  
  
“Obviously. Who better?”  
  
Lestrade shook his head. “All right. So how do we identify them? Find their names, I mean.”  
  
Sherlock got a faraway look in his eyes for a second. He looked at the packets of photos again. “More recent.”  
  
“Pardon?”  
  
“These are all at least ten years old. She must have switched to digital… her laptop!” He leapt up from the floor and stepped directly over Lestrade, who yelped in protest but got up slightly more slowly and followed Sherlock to the other room–Jordan Atkinson’s home office.  
  
Sherlock was already seated at the desk, powering up the laptop, his fingers drumming impatiently as it ran through its start-up routine. The desktop background was a photo of William Atkinson and a slightly younger man. The resemblance between the two was unmistakable. And the younger man was missing a leg.  
  
“His brother?” Lestrade said, pointing.  
  
“Yes,” Sherlock murmured. “Has anyone been in contact with him?” Lestrade was slightly taken aback. “He might know something,” Sherlock added. Ah. That made more sense than Sherlock actually caring about the family connection. Lestrade took out his mobile and called Sally as Sherlock’s graceful fingers flew over the keyboard, finding and opening the photo files.  
  
Lestrade looked over his shoulder, not surprised at this point to see that each of the folders within the main directory was both named and dated. “Boy, she _wa_ s organized,” he commented. His own collection of personal digital photos, which was paltry, was a haphazard mess of long, automatically generated file names, all thrown into one folder.  
  
“You’re just noticing?” Sherlock asked wryly. There was silence as he skimmed through the photos, his grey eyes reflecting the images on the screen weirdly. Then, excitedly, “Ah! There they are.”  
  
And indeed, there was the couple. In dozens of shots. In a folder labelled “Steve and Maggie” and a date.   
  
“Let’s see. Oh, a wedding. _Their_ wedding!” Lestrade leaned over Sherlock’s shoulder, making him flinch slightly. The couple from the previous picture, a few years older. The woman was laced tightly into a lavish, overly fussy white gown and the man wore a tuxedo with a blue cummerbund that did not flatter his round figure. There were several photos of William Atkinson, looking elegant in a matching tux that fit him perfectly. And there was one of Jordan, dressed in what Lestrade considered a fairly hideous blue bridesmaid’s frock, a glass of wine in one hand and a pair of silver high heels in the other.  
  
“Wait,” the DI exclaimed. He dashed back into the bedroom and plunged his hand into one of the piles from the box, rapidly sliding papers across each other. Triumphantly, he withdrew a thick envelope. It was a wedding invitation, addressed to William Atkinson and Jordan Hamlin Atkinson. The lining of the envelope matched the hideous blue of the frock and cummerbunds, and there was a silver sticker still sealing the opening. The top of the envelope had been neatly slit. He pulled the invitation out and very possibly a small shout of delight escaped his lips. He hurried back into the other room waving the invitation at Sherlock, reading it aloud. “Magdalene Mary Drew and Stephen David Ornstein invite you to join them in celebrating their special day…” The date of the wedding matched the one on the photo files. Lestrade sighed in relief and pulled out his mobile to call Sargent Donovan again. Gave her instructions. Spelled names. Rang off. And then something occurred to him. “Wait. They had them in their wedding party and then they tried to kill her?”  
  
“Them. Succeeded. They killed William… Atkinson, then began looking for something of his. They searched him first, at the accident scene. Then they broke into his place of work twice, stealing his laptop the first time and probably searching for the password to the server the second, and then they came to the flat, not long after the box of his belongings was brought here.”  
  
“God.”  
  
Sherlock suddenly motioned irritably at Lestrade, then froze, thinking. Lestrade knew enough to simply shut it, waiting patiently. He didn’t have to wait long. The younger man strode back into the sitting room and over to William’s desk, where he had left the stacks of business cards. He grabbed a small stack, glancing briefly at the cards, and spinning, triumphantly shoved them under the DI’s nose as he came up behind him. Lestrade tipped his head back and took the cards. Three of them. All three were from security and alarm companies. And all three contained a familiar name. “Oh, bloody hell!” he blew out.  
  
All three security companies had, at one point, employed Stephen Ornstein.  
  



	8. Chapter 8

John re-joined them, reporting what had unfolded at the post-mortem.  
  
“Nothing we didn’t already know,” Sherlock said, surprisingly reasonably.  
  
“I suppose not,” John agreed.  
  
“So…” Sherlock stopped talking. Suddenly. Sat on the sofa. Suddenly. He leaned his elbows on his knees and leaned his head into his hands, his long fingers plunged into his dark, wild curls, his eyes covered by the heels of his hands.  
  
John opened his mouth to say something.  
  
“Shut up. SHUT UP.”  
  
John shut his mouth. Greg shrugged. Nothing new under the sun when it came to Sherlock when he was thinking.  
  
Sherlock was muttering to himself, too low for either of them to hear. His arms twitched a bit, then came away from his eyes, which were shut. He made an odd motion with his right arm, gesturing with his hand near his neck, then moving as if he was throwing something away from himself. And then the arm came down and his left arm stretched out and, eyes still shut, he clearly mimed slicing violently at his own left arm with his right hand.  
  
And then he was on his feet, shoving past them and down the hall. They followed him into the kitchen, a look of genuine concern on Lestrade’s face. John remained calm, but he didn’t let a large gap open up between himself and the detective.  
  
The blood was dried now, making the scene even more dismal. Sherlock spun around, glanced down at the kitchen table, and suddenly lunged for it, plunging his hands directly into the lump of dough that was now dried out, the blood on it turned a deep maroon.  
  
“Sherlock?” Lestrade whispered from the doorway. “What are you doing?”  
  
“Ha!” Sherlock responded victoriously. He turned to face them, a silver heart-shaped locket swinging from his flour-covered fingers. “They were looking for this.”  
  
“What’s that?” John asked, intrigued. He reached out to touch the locket, but Sherlock swiftly pulled his hand protectively down to his chest.  
  
“It’s a locket, but it’s… oh, clever,” he muttered, now holding it up before his eyes. “It’s sealed shut. Of course.” He clearly was speaking to himself now. “And the clasp?” He checked. “Yes, that’s sealed as well. That’s why she had to break it off.” He was speaking so softly that Lestrade took a step forward to hear, then gently reached up, his hand sliding under the chain. He examined the piece of jewellery cautiously. Sherlock stood still, holding the broken chain from which it dangled.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I can see it. It’s been soldered shut. But why?”  
  
“Because William Atkinson was brilliant.”  
  
He spun around again, back out of the kitchen and straight to the desk in the sitting room. He seated himself at it, turned on the lamp, and held the locket close to the bulb with one hand, removing his pocket magnifying glass from his coat pocket with the other. He examined the locket with infinitesimal care, speaking over his shoulder in the general direction of Lestrade and John, finally deigning to bring them into his deductions.  
  
“It’s relatively new; not more than two years old. Not expensive. Costume jewel, but sturdy. He had it…” Sherlock paused, an odd look crossing his face. John frowned. “… engraved,” Sherlock completed. He held it toward John, who could see, even from where it swung from those long, white fingers, intertwined, ornate letters. _JHA_. “He must have insisted… no, you’re not happy with that.” He paused, looking closely at John’s face. He frowned, thinking for a second. “He _asked_ her to wear it always. He probably soldered the clasp shut himself. There’s a small soldering iron in her office.”  
  
Lestrade raised his eyebrows, impressed despite himself that Sherlock had seen that among the myriad of items.  
  
“But why?” John finally blurted out.  
  
Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Isn’t it obvious?” he shot back. He glared at his flatmate, shot a look at the equally perplexed DI, and groaned, shaking his head until his curls rustled. “William’s research was in remote robotics and prosthetics. The programming of them. Microchips and nanotechnology. He kept no notes on his old laptop, his current laptop, his wife’s laptop, or the server at his job. No samples. No parts. Nothing tangible. Why? Because he didn’t need to.” He paused, then rambled on. “His supervisor noted his remarkable memory, did he not? And his ability to picture things—he could look at a set of blueprints and they would just exist for him as clearly as if he was walking through the building itself. So what form would his research notes take?”  
  
Lestrade had sat on the side chair nearest the desk, turning it to face Sherlock. He was perched at the edge of it, really, leaning forward intently. “Probably _none,_ ” the DI responded slowly. “He probably didn’t leave _any_ notes, any plans… right—nothing tangible.”  
  
Sherlock’s face relaxed. “Yes!” he shouted exultantly. “Except…” he prompted.  
  
“Except… the microchip itself?” John ventured from where he stood, just behind Sherlock.  
  
Sherlock stood up so abruptly he nearly knocked John over. “Thank you!” he shouted again, spinning around to face him. John caught his balance and smiled at his slightly mad mate.  
  
Sherlock, still facing and speaking directly to John, reached his long arm backward toward Lestrade. “Here,” he said, thrusting the locket in the DI’s direction. “Get this open. I guarantee it holds at least one microchip that will change remote robotic surgery and prosthetics dramatically, and possibly, if the researchers are lucky, the plans to the damn thing.”  
  
Lestrade sprang up from the chair and called for the constable, who had retreated to the peace of the hallway after Sherlock’s arrival.  
  
When he came back in, Sherlock shoved another small pile of business cards at him. “Companies that could have actually fabricated the chip. Probably sworn to privacy or secrecy or something boring.”  
  
Eventually Anderson and his team reappeared. Sally was pressed into service contacting the electronics companies. John could hear her, dimly, speaking urgently to one person after another on her mobile. Anderson swore a bit as he took photos of the broken-open dough and bagged the locket. Finally he had headed back to NSY with the new evidence, muttering under his breath that at least there he was actually considered an intelligent and thorough forensics man. John was a bit surprised that Sherlock had given up the locket so readily until he realized that since he already knew what was inside, it held no allure, nor any additional information on the suspects.  
  
Released from the mesmerizing locket, Sherlock’s agitation got the better of him. He had been pacing the sitting room since the return of the forensics squad, glaring at them as he strode. During the pacing, John sat very patiently on the sofa. Lestrade would wander into the kitchen now and again, but he trusted his team to collect the new evidence correctly and efficiently. John mostly kept his eyes on the wandering consulting detective as he paced by. And when Sherlock was facing away, Lestrade would look into Dr John Watson’s eyes and see the intense, concentrated worry there.  
  
During one pass, Greg silently mouthed, “Is he okay?” while shooting a concerned, questioning look at the younger man.  
  
John glanced over his shoulder, then back at the DI, and shook his head.  
  
And then, occasionally, Sherlock would stand at one of the large windows overlooking the street and become very still. John more than anyone knew that pose. Sherlock wasn’t really watching what was going on outside, although if questioned he could automatically list every person and vehicle that had gone by. When he did that, it was as if there was an invisible movie screen in front of him on which the details of the crime played for him, over and over, while he brooded.  
  
And during one such interval, John found that he couldn’t help himself. With a glance toward the open archway that led to the hallway and the members of the forensic team, he rose and walked steadily over to Sherlock—when he moved like that, Lestrade could picture him on patrol in Afghanistan—stood on Sherlock’s right, and ever so gently reached his left arm across the detective’s waist. Sherlock didn’t move; didn’t seem to acknowledge the doctor’s presence, but as Lestrade watched, the dark curls dipped and, to his amazement, Sherlock’s head tipped to rest against John’s.  
  
“She gave up her life to protect his secret.” That was Sherlock.  
  
“She succeeded. It’s safe.” That was John.  
  
And then the forensics team left again, and Sherlock sighed in relief. He slammed himself into the chair at Jordan Atkinson’s desk, his fingers flying over the keys of her laptop again. John had remained in the sitting room, going through everything to see if he could spot anything that would help, but Greg had followed his mad consultant.  
  
“What are you looking for?” he asked.  
  
“Anything else related to the Ornsteins, obviously.”  
  
More photos. A letter describing a dinner party. Sherlock paused and considered for a minute, then continued his search. Lestrade leaned over and looked at the monitor. “Hey. How did you get into her email?”  
  
“Her password was ‘William’ followed by the year in which they were married. Hardly original.” Using the search function, he quickly scanned the inbox and sent files, then plunged into the saved files. As with everything else, Jordan Atkinson had been compulsively organized about her email. “All murder victims should be so obliging,” he commented, showing the DI. “It would save you an inordinate amount of time.”  
  
“Twat.”  
  
Sherlock began opening files at an alarming rate. He glanced over his shoulder at Lestrade. “Any word on the whereabouts of our suspects?” he asked the DI while continuing to type.  
  
Lestrade took out his mobile and scrolled down through his texts.  
  
“Here… let’s see…” he muttered as he struggled to read the tiny text. _It’s time for reading specs, Greg_ , he thought to himself.  
  
“Ah, here. Officers dispatched to suspects’ home and last known places of employment. Neither has reported to work for two days. Flat empty; mail indicates they’ve been gone as many days.”  
  
Sherlock blew out his breath through his mouth, noisily. “Well, that’s hardly a surprise,” he muttered sarcastically.  
  
Lestrade gave him a dirty look. “Come on, now,” he growled. “We do know how to look for people at the Yard.”  
  
John wandered into the room, looking from one man to the other with curiosity.  
  
“Go on,” Sherlock said in a low voice, through gritted teeth.  
  
Lestrade continued. “Couple does not own a motor vehicle. No record of them renting one in the past year.”  
  
John nodded in admiration. Of course they would try to get out of town.  
  
“No credit card records of purchase of any sort of public transport… no airlines, no British Rail. They haven’t even used their Oyster cards.” Here Lestrade paused, somewhat crestfallen. He had obviously reached the end of his messages.  
  
Sherlock grunted. “Check their bank records. They probably recently withdrew everything—in cash. Oh! Any auto thefts in their neighbourhood in the past 48 hours? Probably an unused car. And an alarm system that failed to work.”  
  
Lestrade texted something, or… no, John realized. He had a smart phone and was on some database or other, he presumed. After a minute, Lestrade shook his head again, not in defeat but in amazement.  
  
“Yeah. Here. Garaged car one street away from their flat, reported missing yesterday. Security system disengaged somehow.”  
  
“So we know what they were driving… at least two days ago. But _where? Where would they go?”_  
  
“Time to head to their flat, is it?” Lestrade offered.  
  
Sherlock was already out the door.  
  



	9. Chapter 9

The Ornsteins’ flat was exactly what John had pictured. Inelegant and tacky and messy. Some attempt had been made to improve it; there were some framed prints on the walls—reproductions of classical paintings. The furniture was, if not attractive, comfortable-looking. The large television had a game console of some sort hooked up to it. A bookcase held a mixture of technical manuals about alarm systems and romance novels, with a few rather nice hardcover books about art thrown in the mix. John wondered which of the Ornsteins was the art buff. He imagined that Sherlock would know, but since it didn’t seem terribly relevant to the case, he didn’t ask.  
  
Sherlock was beyond the point where asking anything of him was acceptable. He was clearly (and John did know this for sure; he hadn’t lived with the man this long to not know his every mood) determined almost to the point of panic to locate the criminal couple before an ordinary (“boring”) police search did.  
  
In fact, where was Sherlock? He glanced up from his examination of the bookshelves in alarm. Lestrade was also not in sight. “Greg?” he called out.  
  
“Kitchen,” came a reassuring voice.  
  
But before John could even locate the kitchen, Sherlock burst out of it. He was biting his knuckle and muttering rather loudly to himself. He looked even more wild than usual. John frowned and reached out to him, but the detective shook him off angrily. “How can anyone live like this?” he asked, apparently of himself, staring wildly around the room. And then he plunged off again, down a hallway.  
  
Considering that Sherlock had decorated their flat in the oh-so-fashionable “early British skull,” stacks of books and papers, disgusting experiments, and smiley-face bullet holes, the expression “the pot calling the kettle black” was on the tip of John’s tongue.  
  
But that was the point, wasn’t it? John realized a second later. Sherlock had surrounded himself (well, both of them) in—himself. Sherlock was unique and so was their flat. This flat was—ordinary. No imagination. Nothing of distinction. A few prints from the National Gallery; maybe some nice bath towels. There was probably a calendar on the kitchen wall—one of those free ones that insurance companies sent at Christmas. Even the mess was mundane, John thought. No beakers of dubious liquids on the drain board, he was sure. And not the opposite, either. No rows of plastic bins, all sorted and labelled.  
  
Lestrade walked in from the kitchen. He looked exhausted. “He’s got himself worked up,” he commented. There was a crash from another room. John and Lestrade looked at each other in alarm.  
  
“I’m coming, Sherlock!” John called out.  
  
Sherlock was in the bedroom, glaring at an unappetizing mess of cosmetics, jewellery, and perfume bottles strewn across a dresser. He frowned at himself in the dusty, smeared mirror. There was a tall bureau, the top of which held a pocket watch in a glass dome, a small leather-covered lidded box, and a few obviously male toiletry items—a comb; a small nail buffer. “Interesting,” he murmured, looking at the watch. He yanked open and slammed shut drawers; the cupboard. Dropped on his face and peered under the bed, holding the cheap duvet disdainfully between his thumb and one finger.  
  
*  
  
Lestrade’s mobile rang. He took the call, slipping away from the chaos that Sherlock had created in the flat, first pulling out and then shoving into boxes… things. Lestrade knew that there was a method to Sherlock’s madness, but he certainly couldn’t detect it right now.  
  
“DI Lestrade… oh, yeah. What’s up?” He listened. John glanced over from where he was seated on the floor, helping Sherlock put an odd assortment of papers and other items into evidence boxes. Greg listened for several minutes, nodding. “Okay. Ta.” He rang off and shoved his mobile into his pocket, walking back over to them. “They’ve located William Atkinson’s brother, Scott.”  
  
Sherlock paused, looking up from where he sat cross-legged on the floor. “And?” he prodded impatiently.  
  
“He’s been in a long-term rehab for four months now and isn’t expected to get out for at least another two,” Lestrade replied quietly. He peered into the box that John was filling and frowned.  
  
“Rehab?” John asked, looking back up at the DI.  
  
“Yeah. Apparently he’s not been doing too well since his brother died. Alcohol. Heroin. A few arrests for public intoxication, and then he finally wrapped his car around a lamp post.”  
  
John didn’t move; didn’t say a thing, but his eyes… Greg was constantly amazed at how much Dr John Watson, ex-soldier, said just with his eyes.  
  
“Come on,” Greg muttered, indicating that John should get up with a toss of his head toward the door.  
  
John glanced at Sherlock, who had looked back down after the DI’s statement about rehab and had clearly tuned out their additional exchange.  
  
John nodded and rose stiffly, stretching his back and his legs once he was standing. His right hand found his left shoulder and rubbed it a bit. He followed the DI down the hallway. Greg bent his head low toward John’s. “Listen,” he murmured, just above a whisper. “I don’t really know how to say this, but this case seems to have Sherlock more wound up than usual. What’s his deal?”  
  
John shook his head. “No, it’s fine. He’s fine,” he insisted.  
  
“He doesn’t _seem_ fine. Look, John, I know about triggers…”  
  
There was a moment of silence during which John considered being mildly outraged on Sherlock’s behalf and Greg was waiting for him to do so. And then John shook his head. “Which ones?” he demanded drily. “The drugs? The cutting? The fact that William Atkinson was a well-dressed genius with few social skills?”  
  
“Erm… yeah, those–” Greg nodded. He was at a loss.  
  
And suddenly John laughed out loud. It startled the DI and he took a half step back from where he had been, leaning rather close to John’s ear. “Greg, _everything_ is a trigger to him. Everything—and nothing. He breezed through that triple homicide with the overdose two months ago. And then the last really bad night we had had something to do with… what was it? Some pirate movie.” Greg shot him a dumbfounded look and he put his hands up in surrender. “Don’t ask me to explain. I can’t. I really can’t. Yes, he is very tightly wound on this case but don’t worry—I’ve got him.”  
  
“John!” Sherlock shouted from the other room. Both men quickly re-joined the detective, who had risen and was pulling on his coat. “I can’t think in these surroundings. Honestly, who decorates with a portrait of…”–he leaned down and read the small text at the bottom of the image– “Pitt the Younger? Odd-looking man.” He rolled his eyes. “Have this brought to Baker Street,” he ordered Lestrade as he indicated the evidence boxes.   
  
“Yes, your highness,” Lestrade remarked.  
  
“Good,” Sherlock replied, not even bothering to turn around. He swept out the door and John hurried after him, shooting a look over his shoulder as he shoved his arms into his jacket and ran after the consulting detective.  
  
“I suggest that _you_ get something to eat _and_ some sleep before you go through the rest of that stuff,” Greg shouted in their general direction.  
  
“Yes, we’ll do that,” John agreed, catching up and grabbing Sherlock’s elbow. Sherlock snorted in derision.  
  
Greg sighed. Deeply. “Guys!” he shouted to the constables who had joined them. “Come grab this stuff. It has to be brought into the Yard to be recorded as evidence first.”  
  



	10. Chapter 10

“I’m not hungry.”  
  
John made the most exasperated sound he could possibly make. “I don’t particularly care if you’re hungry or not, you git. You are going to eat something, and then you are going to shower, and then you are going to get some sleep.” He yanked the take-away containers from their bag viciously, slamming them on the coffee table. He grabbed a pair of chopsticks and pointed them at Sherlock, then at the couch. “Sit. Down.”  
  
Sherlock shut his eyes.  
  
“And not acting like a four-year-old would be a good thing right about now,” John continued.  
  
“I have to continue going through…”  
  
“Fine. Fine!” John said through gritted teeth. “When they get the boxes here, you can go through them. Until then, you will _eat._ ”  
  
Sherlock took two long strides and John found himself chest-to-chest with the taller man. His grey-blue eyes shot daggers into John’s and a muscle on the side of his cheek pulsed as he loomed over him. “Very well, _Captain Watson,_ ” he growled.  
  
“Here,” John replied smugly, shoving a carton of dumplings at him. “Start with this.”  
  
Begrudgingly was an understatement as to how Sherlock finally sat, accepted the carton, and stabbed at a dumpling with the chopsticks. He was scowling not just with his face (although the horizontal lines between his eyebrows were a sight to behold) but with his entire body. He shoved the dumpling into his mouth.  
  
Somewhere in the back of John’s head bounced the fact that the always-graceful Sherlock Holmes could really be quite a pig when he ate. But at least he was eating. He sighed and sat next to the detective, attempting to open another container calmly. There was a minute of silence. And then he couldn’t stand it. “Look, you idiot. When I was in Afghanistan, eating was a privilege. A joy. You never knew when you’d get to eat, or _what_ you’d get to eat, or when you’d get interrupted by explosions. A two-month-old care package with just crumbs of some biscuits that someone had made and sent from home was bliss.”  
  
Sherlock was silent, mainly, John suspected, because his mouth was full.  
  
“I understand your dedication to The Work, and I understand that you feel that food slows you down, but there are times when you simply must eat.”  
  
Sherlock put down the container. “There. I’ve eaten,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “Can I _please_ stop now?”  
  
John looked at him closely. There was a note of desperation in Sherlock’s voice, and he wouldn’t look at John. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Sure. Why not go shower? I’m sure they’ll get the evidence boxes here by the time you’re done.”  
  
The detective rose and without a glance at John headed for the bathroom.  
  
John glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes. If Sherlock wasn’t back out in fifteen minutes, he would knock on the door. Or maybe just go in.  
  
Because there was only so many times he could clear out Sherlock’s stash, and the man was the devil when it came to finding new hiding places. The drug paraphernalia was one thing—it was relatively easy to find; hypodermics were distinct in shape; bulky.   
  
It was the razors that were hard. Too small. Too thin. Too easy to stash.  
  
John breathed a sigh of relief when Sherlock emerged, his dark curls plastered against his head, wearing a t-shirt, pyjama bottoms, and his favourite blue dressing gown. But as he scooted into the bathroom for his own shower, he didn’t even pretend to be casual about looking around the room carefully. Sherlock knew how to hide things, but sometimes his own impatience was his worst enemy.  
  
John checked. Nothing in the bin. Nothing in the stash. The box of sterile gauze pads and the roll of first aid tape he had put in the medicine cabinet hadn’t been moved. He sighed and climbed into the shower.  
  
*  
  
Unfortunately, the evidence boxes were a long time arriving. John was growing a bit dizzy as he watched his flatmate pace. He finally stepped directly in the man’s path. Sherlock shot him a dirty look, took one step sideways, and attempted to continue walking.  
  
“Nope,” the doctor commented as he reached out and grabbed Sherlock by the waist.   
  
“What are you doing?!”  
  
John turned him around and held him firmly, his hands on the other man’s hips. He tilted his head up and looked into his eyes. “Stop.”  
  
“I can’t.” Sherlock struggled to break free.  
  
“Then tell me what’s going on in that great brain of yours. Come on. You know it helps you to talk it out.” He tightened his grip.  
  
Sherlock considered this suggestion and nodded. John was right, and he also often would make a comment that inspired a new train of thought. “Something’s not right,” he muttered.  
  
John, his face still only a few inches away, looked at him with concern. “What’s not right? I mean, other than two murderers on the loose.”  
  
“It doesn’t make sense. _They_ don’t make sense.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Think about it. Their flat. Those people. Total and complete lack of imagination. Mundane. Everything. Dull. Dull jobs, dull home. Horribly cliché wedding.”  
  
“All right, yeah,” the older man agreed.  
  
“So how in heaven’s name do two such dull, mundane, boring people suddenly mastermind not one but two murders? And over what? Technology that is clearly beyond their tiny little minds to comprehend. What were they going to do with it if they found it? They certainly couldn’t claim that they had invented it.” Sherlock shook his head until his curls swirled around his face. “No. No. They were clearly not working on their own behalf.”  
  
“You mean they were working for someone else?” John clarified for himself.  
  
“Exactly. It might have been their idea—I suspect that the Ornsteins knew about William Atkinson’s project. I don’t see why they wouldn’t. It wasn’t a secret to them about the brother losing his leg, nor about William’s background in engineering. But then—” He stopped and huffed out a deep breath. “Shut up. I have to think.”  
  
*  
  
The boxes from the Ornsteins’ flat finally arrived. Without a word to either John or the constables who delivered them, Sherlock tore the top off the closest one and began pulling out its contents, one piece at a time. John watched him for a minute or so. “Sherlock, I’m going to bed,” he said aloud.  
  
“Mmm,” was the reply.  
  
John sighed and headed upstairs to his bedroom. It was cold and dark and quiet there. He lay down gratefully, figuring he’d be out like a light in fifteen seconds.  
  
He actually lasted for nearly three minutes.  
  
And as he drifted off, his flatmate suddenly froze in place. He looked up somewhat wildly. “John?” he whispered. He looked around the flat. Took in the cleared coffee table; the cleared kitchen table. The silent, black telly. The definite lack of John in his chair, at the desk, or in the kitchen.  
  
And then his head tilted as the distinct sound of light snoring drifted through the room.  
  
“Ah,” he muttered, nodding his head somewhat vigorously. “Right, then.” And his hand plunged back into the box.  
  



	11. Chapter 11

Sherlock sat in the visitor’s chair in the darkened hospital room, his legs drawn up and his arms wrapped around them. His chin rested on his knees. He stared at the woman in the bed. She looked essentially the same as when they had seen her last. Her left arm with its terrible wound was tucked under the blanket, but her right arm was exposed. He could see the restraint on it. Her eyes were shut and she breathed deeply and steadily.   
  
He didn’t need to see her again, he mused. At least not like this. His skill at observation combined with his eidetic memory would make examining her again redundant and a waste of valuable time. No, she was of no use until she was awake and able to tell him more about her attackers. Well, not that it was of such great importance to him now. If she remembered in time for a trial, that would be helpful, he mused. A dramatic court appearance, pointing at the repugnant couple.  
  
“Oh, do stop being so boring,” she said.  
  
“What?” Sherlock looked up, startled. He hadn’t noticed any signs of her waking.  
  
“I still can’t tell you exactly what happened,” she murmured. She shifted slightly, trying to sit up. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she exclaimed. She yanked at the wrist restraint on her right arm. “Can you please…”  
  
Sherlock got up gracefully and delicately unfastened the restraint, then returned to the visitor’s chair.  
  
“Honestly, can’t anyone convince them that I don’t need this?” she spat out. “Can’t you?”  
  
“Apparently not,” he replied calmly.  
  
She glared at him, rubbing her newly-freed arm against her blanket. “Don’t you find this a bit… melodramatic? The brooding and all?” she finally said.  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He looked down again.  
  
“Yes you do. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You of all people know why I don’t need to be restrained. You knew from the beginning. You _get_ it.”  
  
Silence.  
  
“And I think those other two—the doctor and the inspector—they know, too. Because of you.”  
  
Silence.  
  
“Well, it’s incredibly dull. Can you please just get out of your head and find those… ogres… who killed William and explain just exactly how they landed me in here?”  
  
“I want to hear more about him. About William.”  
  
“About William? Don’t make me talk about him.”  
  
“It will help.”  
  
“ _Fine._ He had amazing light blue eyes. His favourite cartoon character was Danger Mouse. He didn’t like Thai food. Is that enough?” she spat.  
  
“No. Tell me more. Tell me his favourite composer. Tell me his favourite piece. Tell me that his favorite colour was purple. Tell me that he liked chips with too much vinegar. Tell me…”  
  
“You know all that. The way you know that his favourite author was Evelyn Waugh and how he chipped that tooth and that he didn’t like wool jumpers. And that he was brilliant.” Sherlock was silent for a bit. She watched him, and then she finally added, “It’s all right—you knowing all that. I think he would have liked that.”  
  
“But it’s not _helping._ I need to find them.” He shook his head. _The puzzle_ , he told himself. _Focus on the puzzle._  
  
“It must have hurt,” he finally remarked. He motioned with his right hand, miming yanking something off his neck.  
  
“I didn’t really notice at the time,” she rebutted. “It was hard, though.”  
  
“Smart of you.”  
  
“I’m not even sure why I did it. It was … it was so odd for them to just show up like that.”  
  
Sherlock nodded. “I think that subconsciously you realized why they were there, or at least that you were in danger. Oh! You were going for your mobile—”  
  
“Which was in the kitchen,” she completed, nodding.  
  
“Did you—do you—know what’s in the locket?”  
  
“Yes. Not at first. Maybe not until right then. I can’t remember.”  
  
“But you _did_ know. At least at the last second you did. And you hid the locket in the first place that came to hand.”  
  
She looked at him closely. He wasn’t bothered by it; he got that look a lot. It was that half admiring/half distrustful look. John hated it when people looked at him that way. He simply looked back, wondering about how hard she had fought against her attacker despite her size and weight difference. Wondering what she must have felt, not while she was being gagged or bound to the chair, but when one beefy hand had grabbed the knife and the other her arm.  
  
He suddenly blinked, surprised at himself. She was glaring at him. Then her features softened a bit.  
  
“You want to see them again, don’t you?”  
  
“See?”  
  
“Don’t play dumb. You do it very poorly. You want to see my legs. See the scars. The cuts. Especially the newest ones.”  
  
Sherlock nodded once, very slowly. Because it was true. He didn’t need to; he knew what they looked like. But he wanted to.  
  
“Well, you can’t. Not right now. Try and I’ll have you chucked out of here.”  
  
Sherlock nodded rather emphatically. That was something with which he was familiar. Funny, that. He seemed to get chucked out of a lot of places. But he hadn’t been this time. At least not yet. “I need to know more about the Ornsteins.” Doggedly. Digging in.  
  
She groaned. “Oh, God. Them. Horrid people. I never could figure out why William was friends with Steve. I mean, he had other friends at school. Some really good ones. Steve just sort of latched onto him their last year. I think he was just too polite to get rid of him. And Maggie…” she rolled her eyes.  
  
“That was rather melodramatic,” he commented, smiling the smallest bit.  
  
“That _cow._ God. I never could stand her. Did you know that she had this huge crush on William? I swear that the only reason she married Steve was because she finally gave up her ludicrous dream of getting him. I mean, I don’t think it was a coincidence that they got engaged right after we got married.”  
  
“But what a lovely frock you got to wear…” he snickered.  
  
She giggled. Lying in her hospital bed, face still so white it blended into her pillow, IV drip in her right arm, left arm so badly damaged it was doubtful she would ever regain full use of her hand, she giggled.  
  
“It _was_ awful, wasn’t it? I don’t even know where she found them. At least twenty years out of date. And that colour…” she shook her head in rueful disbelief. “I don’t think she knew, but I overheard her say to someone that she didn’t want her bridesmaids to look pretty because it was _her_ day.”  
  
Sherlock suddenly got serious again. He leaned forward, then rose and went to her bed. He crouched down beside it so their heads were almost level and gazed into her eyes.  
  
“Do you know where they are?” he demanded.  
  
Her eyes fluttered; the lids drooping down.  
  
“Who?” she asked, suddenly sounding very sleepy.  
  
“The Ornsteins. Steve and Maggie. Where would they have gone?”  
  
She shook her head. The effort was obviously huge.  
  
“Come on. You _do_ know. Now who’s being boring?” he challenged.  
  
“I… don’t.” She spoke slowly, her lips barely moving.  
  
“You do know,” he repeated emphatically. “Tell me.”  
  
“Yes. I… seafood. Seaside. Somewhere… velvet. It was… uh… oysters.”  
  
And some sort of alarm went off on the monitor next to the bed. Startled and thrown off balance, Sherlock fell from his crouching position…  
  
*  
  
And found himself on the floor in Baker Street, sprawled out next to one of the boxes that had been collected from the Ornstein’s flat. And in his right hand he clutched a glossy brochure for a bed and breakfast in Kent. Whitstable. Of course. Oysters!  
  
“John!” he shouted at the top of his voice, aware that his flatmate had gone to bed hours before. Hours. He stared at the clock angrily. It was nearly five in the morning. He had fallen asleep. Wasting time. That was the _other_ reason he hated sleeping during a case. He grabbed his mobile and shot off a text to Lestrade.  
  



	12. Chapter 12

“Whitstable?” Lestrade echoed tiredly.  
  
“He’s sure,” John added, unnecessarily.  
  
“He always is,” Lestrade murmured. “Okay. I’m guessing that he doesn’t want to go?”  
  
“No need. He said it’s guaranteed you’ll find them at that B & B. Something about their lack of imagination. I don’t know.”  
  
“I’m not dragging my arse there. Locals will take care of it; transport them down.”  
  
“Do warn them…” John hesitated.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“She’s got a nasty temper.”  
  
“Oh, yeah… right. Thanks, mate.”  
  
“Righto.”  
  
*  
  
Lestrade bounded up the stairs and knocked at the open door of the flat. “Hey, Greg,” John greeted him. “I just finished boxing up the last of this stuff.” He indicated a stack of newly-packed evidence boxes.  
  
“Thanks. I’ll have them collected.”  
  
“So…?”  
  
“So…?” Lestrade echoed a bit playfully. John smiled.  
  
“So did you get them?”  
  
The DI waved his hand in feigned nonchalance. “The Ornsteins? Of course.”  
  
“Tell me about it!” John indicated Sherlock’s chair and sat down eagerly in his own, perching on the edge of it.  
  
“It was exactly the way he said it would be—they were in that B & B; they had arrived without a reservation, in the stolen car, and paid in advance for an entire week—in cash. The owner said it was fortunate that she had a room available, and since they had been there before, she had no reason to refuse them.”  
  
“And…?”  
  
“She knocked out a tooth on one officer and stabbed another with a letter opener before they were able to subdue her.”  
  
John whistled in admiration—not at the violence, of course—but at the accuracy of his flatmate’s prediction. “He nailed them, all right,” he commented.  
  
“Have they said what they were going to do with it yet?” Sherlock’s voice startled both of them. He stood at the door to the kitchen.  
  
“You were right about that, too,” Lestrade admitted. “Stephen Ornstein started blabbing as soon as they got him in the patrol car. How it wasn’t his idea but hers. He apparently told her about William’s plans for the chip and she somehow decided that it would be worth a lot of money if they could get their hands on it. He claimed that she had pushed him into the whole thing—forced him to use what he knew about the security systems to override them.”  
  
“She was driving the transit van, then?” John inquired,   
  
“She was. He was horrified that she actually hit him.”  
  
“How did she force him—”  
  
“The victims of domestic violence aren’t always female,” Sherlock interrupted.  
  
“Oh. Wait…” John paused, a puzzled look on his face “Sherlock, you said it—about what they were going to do with the chip. How they couldn’t claim that they had invented it. What _were_ they going to do with it?”  
  
“That was the flaw in the plan, John.” Sherlock entered the sitting room. “And it was a large one. Maggie Ornstein was correct in thinking that the chip was worth a great deal of money—companies in the United States in particular would be eager customers. But that’s as far as she got. She had no clue how they were going to explain where they got it. How it got manufactured. How it _worked._ How they would prevent anyone at the electronics company that actually manufactured the prototype from pointing out that they had never worked with either of them, only with William. And as far as she was concerned, they didn’t _have_ to know.”  
  
“They didn’t have to know? Why not?” Lestrade queried.  
  
“You had said that they weren’t working on their own behalf,” John recalled.  
  
“Oh, John. You do show glimmers of brilliance at times. They were and they weren’t.” Sherlock, who had wandered over to the desk and was flipping through some papers on it, turned and looked back at them. “They had someone in mind—someone who would be able to ‘dispose’ of the technology, no questions asked of them, at least, and presumably pay them a tidy sum for it. Someone who’s known to arrange for such things.”  
  
John bit his lip. “Christ, Sherlock,” he muttered. “You mean Moriarty, don’t you?”  
  
“Yes. No. Almost. What I’m saying is that the Ornsteins somehow found out about Moriarty’s schemes, and Maggie Ornstein decided that she wanted some of that, and figured out that the chip would be valuable.”  
  
“Yeah. Seems like it would be right up his alley. So why is it a ‘no’ then?”  
  
“Think! The Ornsteins were _hardly_ criminal masterminds. Stephen Ornstein was good at one thing—disabling security systems. The only reason they got away with hitting William was shoddy CCTV equipment and a rental agency that didn’t bother reporting that one of their vehicles had apparently been taken out for a joy ride—alarm system override again—and returned _damaged._ Despite that, they couldn’t find the chip. Not on his person. Not at his place of work. And ultimately not in his flat. His wife’s quick thinking saw to that.”  
  
“So…”   
  
“So do you think that James Moriarty would have put up with such incompetence? Surely not.”  
  
“So what does he have to do with it then?”  
  
“I think that the Ornsteins were hoping to find the chip, present it to him, and dazzle him with their brilliance. Idiots.”  
  
*  
  
A week later, John’s mobile rang. Surprised, he accepted the call, noting that it was barely seven o’clock.  
  
“Hello? Greg?” he whispered.  
  
“Sorry. Did I wake you?”  
  
“No. I was just getting up anyway. Hang on a sec.” There was a bit of background noise, and then John’s voice again. “I’m here.”  
  
“I just wanted to know…” the voice hesitated.  
  
“Know what?”  
  
There was a deep sigh, and then Lestrade asked hesitantly, “Is he all right?”  
  
“He’s… I’m looking after him.”  
  
A pause.  
  
“So he’s not all right, is he?”  
  
And another.  
  
“Not really,” John admitted.  
  
Finally. “Yeah. Okay. Thanks. I mean, let me know. I mean… Christ. Just let me know how not okay he is, right?”  
  
This time the silence could be counted in seconds.  
  
Finally. “Yeah. Ta.”  
  
*  
  
A few days after that, John entered the flat and dumped the shopping on the kitchen table.   
  
No Sherlock hovering over the microscope in the kitchen.  
  
No Sherlock draped on the sofa or perched at his laptop (or at John’s, for that matter).  
  
“Sherlock?” John called out, hoping his voice sounded casual. No answer. He wandered down the hallway. The door to Sherlock’s bedroom was open; the room was empty. Door to the loo was shut. Ah.  
  
He knocked, gently.  
  
No reply.  
  
“Sherlock?” he called through the door. “I’m going to make something for dinner. Do you want anything?” He knew that his question was essentially pointless. He waited anyway.  
  
Patiently at first.  
  
A minute later, patience turned to frustration.  
  
Thirty seconds after that, frustration became anger.  
  
Fifteen seconds after that, anger became fear.  
  
He knocked again.  
  
“Sherlock?” he called, his mouth so close to the door that one lip flicked the peeling paint. He reached toward the knob. _No, you will not open this door_ , he told himself.  
  
Another two seconds and that became _Fuck yeah I will._  
  
And he did.   
  
And what he saw was so expected that he almost breathed a sigh of relief, because it had been like waiting for the other shoe to drop.  
  
Was it the army training or the medical training? It didn’t matter anymore, did it? There was blood and a very, very pale man sitting on the cold tile floor, dressing gown in a puddle around him, blade still in his long, white fingers.  
  
No, not surprised a bit.  
  
Kneel down next to him. Don’t try to get his attention first. Simply take the scalpel ( _where had he gotten that? Bart’s, most likely_ ) out of his hand. Toss it out the door onto the hallway floor. Stand up. Find a clean flannel. Wet it in warm water. Down again, this time facing him. Reach out and remove the sticky, warm, blood-soaked wad of toilet tissue from his hand. Gently begin wiping the hand with the warm flannel. Do the same for the other hand. Up. Rinse the flannel. Retrieve the first-aid supplies from the medicine cabinet. Back down. Gloves on. Soak gauze in antiseptic. Finally say something.  
  
“Sherlock.” Quiet, gentle. Don’t expect an answer. Don’t get one. “Sherlock, I’ve got to clean those. It might smart a bit.”  
  
The slightest nod; the tiniest acknowledgment.  
  
Concentrate on cleaning the cuts. There are five of them on the bony white hip. Two are deep enough that stitches might be necessary. No. Not quite bad enough. Plasters will do it. He doesn’t rush. His touch is steady but gentle. Efficiently, John Watson cleans and bandages five self-inflicted cuts on his flatmate’s body while sitting on the cold tile floor of their bathroom.  
  
Finally, he’s done. He takes the bin, tossing into it the bloody toilet tissue, gauze, and bandage packaging. He goes out into the hall, retrieves the scalpel, and drops it in. Strips off and tosses in his gloves. Glances back into the loo. The pale man is still on the floor, his back against the tub, showing no sign of moving. He runs the bin downstairs. He pauses, considering the amount of time it would take him to bring it to the outside bins. Shakes his head. Leaves it at the foot of the stairs. He’ll deal with it later, or Mrs. Hudson would.  
  
Back up, into the loo. Washes his hands, glancing down. His flatmate has pulled his pyjama bottoms back up, covering the bandages. He’s still staring at the floor.  
  
“Do I need to check anywhere else?” John asks, his voice breaking the silence like a shot. Sherlock shakes his head. “Good. I’m glad to hear that. Now, what’s say we get you out of here. The floor’s cold and you don’t exactly have a lot of insulation.”  
  
Sherlock curls himself up on the sofa, his back to the room, head buried in the cushions and dressing gown wrapped tightly around him.  
  
“Tea?” John asks, not waiting for an answer. He moves to the kitchen and switches the kettle on, but before he begins his search for clean mugs, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and sends a text.  
  


> Five cuts

Mugs. Tea bags. Milk and sugar and a spoon. His text alert beeps.

> Bad? 

Pour the boiling water over the tea bags. Pick up the phone again.

> Not too bad

Wait for the tea to steep, savouring the smell.

> Need a hand? 

Toss the bags, add sugar and milk.

> He’s quiet for now

Phone back in pocket. Move two mugs of hot tea into the sitting room.

“Sherlock, have some tea.”

Sit down. Find the paper. Pretend to read while trying not to cry.


End file.
